President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order designating fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction,” a move that arrived just hours before the U.S. military carried out another round of deadly strikes on vessels in the eastern Pacific accused, without publicly presented evidence, of drug trafficking. The near-simultaneous actions have intensified criticism that the administration is using inflated national security rhetoric to justify unlawful killings and expand military operations without congressional authorization.
The executive order directs the Pentagon and other federal agencies to “take appropriate action” to “eliminate the threat of illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals to the United States.” It further warns of “the potential for fentanyl to be weaponized for concentrated, large-scale terror attacks by organized adversaries.” While the administration framed the move as a necessary escalation in the fight against the overdose crisis, critics argue that classifying a narcotic as a weapon of mass destruction does not alter the legal limits on the use of force.
Speaking in the Oval Office as he signed the order, Trump claimed that drugs entering the United States by sea have dropped by 94 percent, even as most illicit drugs, including fentanyl, are known to enter through land ports of entry. Trump went on to describe drug flows as “a direct military threat to the United States of America,” language that critics say blurs the line between law enforcement, public health, and armed conflict.
The administration has repeatedly argued that its immigration restrictions and border enforcement policies are reducing fentanyl consumption. “With a secure border, lives are being saved every day, sex trafficking has plummeted, fentanyl has plummeted,” White House border czar Tom Homan said Monday.
Hours after Trump announced the executive order, U.S. Southern Command confirmed that it carried out strikes on three boats in the eastern Pacific, killing at least eight people. Those attacks brought the death toll from U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since early September to at least 95. The administration has asserted that the killings are part of an armed conflict against drug traffickers, but has not publicly identified the specific enemies involved or the evidence linking the targeted vessels to fentanyl trafficking.
“The lawless killing spree continues,” wrote Brian Finucane, a senior adviser with the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group, in response to the latest strikes. “The administration justifies this slaughter by claiming there’s an armed conflict. But it won’t even tell the U.S. public who the supposed enemies are. Of course, there’s no armed conflict. And outside armed conflict, we call premeditated killing murder.”
Finucane also warned that Trump’s rhetoric mirrors earlier U.S. justifications for war. He said the president is “replaying the Bush administration’s greatest hits as farce,” invoking the false claims about weapons of mass destruction that paved the way for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The second article provided explicitly notes that assertions Iraq possessed WMDs were used as legal justification for that invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Human rights advocates have likewise challenged the administration’s attempt to use the fentanyl designation to retroactively legitimize lethal force. Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued that “Trump’s classification of fentanyl as a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ will do nothing to salvage the blatant illegality of his summary executions off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia because fentanyl largely enters the United States from Mexico.”
The geography of fentanyl production and trafficking further complicates the administration’s claims. According to the reporting provided, fentanyl mostly enters the United States via Mexico, where drug cartels manufacture the synthetic opioid using precursor chemicals imported from China. Production is also booming in the Golden Triangle region of southeast Asia, encompassing Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. Venezuela, while widely viewed as a hub for cocaine trafficking, is not considered a major contributor to global fentanyl production or supply.
Despite this, the Trump administration has accused cartels operating in Venezuela of trafficking fentanyl as a justification for the use of lethal force against vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The timing of the WMD designation has fueled speculation that the administration is laying the groundwork for broader military action. Declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction could provide additional legal justification for strikes against alleged drug trafficking targets on Venezuelan soil, as part of an ongoing pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The executive order’s intent was further illuminated by reporting from The Handbasket. Ahead of the signing, an anonymous State Department official told the outlet that the directive’s “purpose is a combination of designating fentanyl cartels as terrorist organizations and creating justification for conducting military operations in Mexico and Canada.” The official also suspected “that it will be used domestically as justification for rounding up homeless encampments and deporting drug users who are not citizens,” according to The Handbasket reporter Marisa Kabas.
Drug policy experts have questioned whether the administration’s military actions have any meaningful impact on the overdose crisis. Writing for Salon, Drug Policy Alliance executive director Kassandra Frederique and former counter-narcotics official James Saenz observed that “the U.S. is bombing boats that have nothing to do with fentanyl or the overdose crisis devastating American communities.”
“These recent military actions have negligible impact on the transshipment of illicit drugs and absolutely no impact on the production or movement of synthetic opioids. And fentanyl, the synthetic opioid responsible for most U.S. overdoses, is not produced in Venezuela,” they wrote. “These developments raise serious questions about the direction of U.S. drug policy. We must ask ourselves: If these extrajudicial strikes are not stopping fentanyl, then what are the motives?”
Frederique and Saenz also warned of the broader consequences of framing drug policy as a war. “History should be a warning to us. In the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte, the drug war became a tool of fear,” they wrote. “Thousands were killed without trial, democratic institutions were hollowed out, and civil liberties stripped away—all while drugs continued to flow into the country.”
As the administration continues to threaten military action against Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico under the banner of countering fentanyl, lawmakers and legal experts have raised alarms about unauthorized aggression and the erosion of constitutional limits on the use of force. The revival of “weapon of mass destruction” language, coupled with a growing death toll and unanswered questions about evidence and authority, has intensified scrutiny of a policy trajectory that critics say risks repeating some of the most destructive chapters of recent U.S. history.
“The administration justifies this slaughter by claiming there’s an armed conflict. But it won’t even tell the U.S. public who the supposed enemies are.”
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